During the course of manufacture of many diverse types of electrical devices, it is necessary to conduct successive tests following each of a number of fabricating steps in order to preclude subsequent processing of defective product. For example, in the manufacture of an electrical device, such as a rolled metallized film capacitor, tests are conducted following the rolling or winding of the metallized film into a capacitor blank so that defective products are removed from the manufacturing process prior to forming heat fusible electrodes on the ends of the rolled capacitor blank. Further, following each test, it is desirable to sort and feed the capacitor blanks into designated ones of a group of recepticles. During the feeding of the film capacitor blanks, care must be exercised that the capacitor blank is not damaged. In order to avoid such damage, the feed facilities should be designed so that positively driven mechanically feed elements do not engage and mar the capacitor blanks.
Many apparatuses have been developed for sequentially testing a train of advancing electrical devices. One such apparatus is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,468,843 issued May 3, 1949 to D. E. Sunstein wherein resistors arrayed in a stack are successively pushed between and held by a pair of spring loaded test contacts. Upon completion of an electrical resistance test of each resistor, a solenoid control ejector is operated to force the tested resistor into a chute in which are selectively positioned interrupt doors that intercept the falling resistors to direct each resistor into a box in accordance with resistance limits determined by the electrical resistance test. There is still a need for an apparatus which will accept randomly oriented articles, and then feed, position, test and accordingly sort the articles in accordance with test characteristics with a minimum amount of physical contact.